Competence assessment to start PhD

21Jun12

I have been taken aback when I was told by one of my mentees that a CSIR qualified student need to write an examination again in order to qualify for registering PhD in participating organizations. I fail to understand what and how such competency is assessed. Why double participation and assessment? I think it is waste of man hours and unnecessarily creating extraneous competence in assessing genuine candidates. Furthermore, I feel lots of time can be saved if this can be avoided. Let the student be asked to write a project proposal and present on the topic instead. Shouldn’t this work better?